Economists: Working Class Whites ‘Dying Disproportionately’ from ‘Deaths of Despair’
BREITBART.COM
23 Mar 201751
WASHINGTON (AP) — A sobering portrait of less-educated middle-age white Americans emerged Thursday with new research showing them dying disproportionately from what one expert calls “deaths of despair”—suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases.
The new paper by two Princeton University economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, concludes that the trend is driven by the loss of steady middle-income jobs for those with a high school diploma or less.
The economists also argue that dwindling job opportunities have triggered broader problems for this group. They are more likely than their college-educated counterparts, for example, to be unemployed, unmarried or suffering from poor health.
“This is a story of the collapse of the white working class,” Deaton said in an interview. “The labor market has very much turned against them.”
Those dynamics helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump, who won widespread support among whites with only a high school diploma. Yet Deaton said his policies are unlikely to reverse these trends, particularly the health care legislation now before the House that Trump is championing. That bill would lead to higher premiums for older Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has found.
“The policies that you see, seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him,” Deaton said.
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